Robert Lucas Pearsall

Robert Lucas Pearsall by Philippa Swinnerton Hughes (née Pearsall)

Robert Lucas Pearsall (born March 14, 1795 in Clifton, today a district of Bristol in England ; † August 5, 1856 at Schloss Wartensee , Rorschacherberg , Canton St. Gallen , Switzerland ) was an English lawyer and composer of the 19th century.

Life

Pearsall came from a wealthy Quaker family and received a private education. His father was an officer in the British Army and a music lover. His mother bought the family's ancestral home in Willsbridge, Gloucestershire in 1816 after the iron factory, which had been in the family since 1712, was bankrupted by her brother-in-law. Pearsall sold the building, which had since been converted into a flour mill, but again in 1837 after his mother died. The mill still exists today.

In 1817 Pearsall married the daughter Harriet Eliza of the then famous portrait painter William Armfield Hobday (1771-1831). The couple had four children who had to be fed by the lawyer who had practiced in Bristol since 1821 . After suffering a minor stroke in 1825, he gave up his practice and received advice from his doctors to seek treatment abroad. In the same year he moved with his family to Mainz , where he studied music with Joseph Panny, among others . From 1830 to 1842 he lived in Karlsruhe and studied early music and notation for a short time in 1832 with Caspar Ett in Munich .

In 1836/1837 he spent a year in England, both on the family seat and in Bristol, to settle the finances after his mother's death. During this time he had close contact with the Bristol Madrigal Society founded in 1837 , of which he became a member. During the following 14 years he dedicated several songs or madrigals to the society on occasional visits back home.

After separating from his wife in 1842, he moved to Schloss Wartensee in the canton of St. Gallen above Lake Constance . He was in contact with Catholic monks in the vicinity and in Einsiedeln . After another stroke in St. Gallen in 1854, he went back to Schloss Wartensee and was cared for by his former wife and one of his sons until his death two years later. Shortly before his death he converted to the Catholic faith. He was buried in the castle chapel. His son rebuilt the castle in the neo-Gothic style . After the chapel was deedicated in 1957, his bones were reburied in the Catholic Loretto Chapel in Wilen-Wartegg in Rorschacherberg .

Cultural work

Pearsall was an amateur composer, which is why some of his works have not yet been published, but only exist as manuscripts. By adding de and de Willsbridge , his daughter Philippa obviously tried to make his person more interesting and therefore more salable after his death .

Pearsall has rekindled public interest in Renaissance music and ancient church music through essays and letters . He wrote the underlying texts for some of his madrigals . In the 1830s he made sure that his translations of Goethe's Faust and Schiller's Wilhelm Tell were printed in Great Britain .

Individual works

• 1838: Sir Patrick Spens , dialogue ballad for 10 choir voices.
• 1840: Lay a Garland , Madrigal.
• Newly arranged in 2004: Great God of Love , parts, 4, trumpets, French horn, 4 trombones, tuba.
• Take O Take Those Lips Away , Op. 6 for 5 unaccompanied voices.

Trivia

Robert Lucas Pearsall is also credited with the popular duetto buffo di due gatti based on melodies by Weyse and Rossini.

literature

• Alfred Baumgartner: Propylaea World of Music - The Composers - A lexicon in five volumes . tape 4 . Propylaen Verlag, Berlin 1989, ISBN 3-549-07830-7 , pp. 275 .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Robert Pearsall , National Portrait Gallery

Web links

• List of works and biography of the composer (en.)
• Sheet music in the public domain by Robert Lucas Pearsall in the Choral Public Domain Library - ChoralWiki (English)
• In dulci jubilo ( video on YouTube )
• Literature by and about Robert Lucas Pearsall in the catalog of the German National Library